The Microsoft Windows® operating system provides a function that allows a user to capture the contents of their screen (which is copied to the virtual “clipboard”) when the user presses “Print Screen” on the keyboard. Other operating systems provide similar functions. There are also a variety of software applications available which provide more advanced forms of this function. These applications sometimes extend the capabilities of the screen capture to include selecting specific windows to be captured, or allow the editing of the captured image before saving or exporting the image.
When multiple components such as overlapping windows are present on the display device that a user is viewing, typical screen capture applications lose hidden information (i.e. information on lower windows) during the screen capture function, unless individual components are specifically extracted into separate image files. For example, Capture Professional, published by Softworx Inc. allows a user to select multiple components within the display area. These may be, for example, two overlapping windows. In this case, the software then gives the user the choice between creating two separate images, which loses the actual look of the screen, or creating a single image of the two windows as they are presently displayed, in which case data on the partially obscured window is lost.